(ene oT) 14d 


Gn Od pifarim. 


In front of a fire-place where fire is never lighted sits a 
group of women. One is of English parentage but born 
near Burmah, who has been in Rangoon, in the Andaman 
islands, in South India and North India. By her, on the 
sofa, sits another, born in the Buckeye State of the far- 
away North American continent. Next to her sits a pleas- 
ant-faced woman, a native of the Tamil country of South 
India. In the chair next hers is another of Ohio’s daugh- 
ters, and between their chairs, on the floor, is a Bundel- 
ure woman, who has found a Savior who satisfles her 
need. 

Across India from the place of the birth of the first An- 
glo-Indian woman, in the great Indian seaport, Bombay, 
was born the next young English woman. 

In front of this group of Christian women, under a 
mantle-piece with the usual mantle decorations, sits an- 
other woman so different from the rest. She is very thin 
and her complexion is a light brown, her features are not 
without refinement, her eyes are bright and full of strange 
lights and shades. On her head,and covering the short 
iron-gray hair, is an Indian cap with ear laps, over thisis 
wound a figured handkerchief, giving a sort of turban 
effect. On her body is a single dingy white cloth in which 
she drapes her entire figure as she sits on the rug. 

When her thin arms are waved in her many speaking 
gestures, one sees they are entirely devoid of the usual 
glass and metal bangles which Hindu women, rich and 
poor, wear. But above the elbow is a plain iron band, 
symbol of her chains, the widow’s iron which has as 
truly entered her soul as bound itself on herarm. On 
her wrist is a string of wooden beads, and as her cloth 
falls away, we see many strings of wooden beads and a 
queer old copper case on a string. On the beads she 
counts the “vain repetition” of the names of her gods. 


In the copper case is the mystic writing given her by her 
guru (master) at some shrine. 

The woman from the Tamil country leans forward and 
her words flow—she is speaking of One she loves, who 
has saved her from the darkness of death—Jxrsus. “You 
have gone over weary roads,” she said; “ you have sought 
in north and south and east and west for a guru (master), 
did you find one pure, one sinless, one strong to save, one 
to give you the heart’s ease you sought, has your heart 
rest?” 

All the time she was speaking the woman on the rug 
swayed her head negatively in a sort of rhythmical way 
to the words, and the Tamil Christian went on. “I once 
knew a woman like yourself, a Brahmin. She had been 
to Gungotri (where the Ganges rises), up in the land of 
eternal snows, far from our sunny plains, away up in the 
“Abode of Snow” (Himalaya), and had completed visit- 
ing the four great shrines, situated at the four cardinal 
points of India, Jagannath, Ramnath, Dwarakanath and 
Badrinath. On the strength of this fact, she was herself 
saluted as a god and went freely where she would, a 
Hindu saint, people bowed down to her and yet she said, 
‘I have no peace.” One day she heard of a Savior from 
sin after so many years of weary seeking, at last of sal- 
vation ‘without money and without price.’” 


Without money and without price,” murmured the strange 
figure on the hearth-rug, shaking her head in the same 
fashion as before. 

We wondered, as her eyes took on a strange, far-away, 
almost weird, light, as if her thoughts were hundreds of 
miles away by Jagannath, where pilgrims are robbed at 
Kasi (Benares), where the people go away empty-hearted 
and empty-handed. The christian woman finished the 
story of the other woman who is now in Bombay helping 
to give God’s word to her people. 

“And you?” some one asks, “Have you been long a pil- 
grim?” 

“Many years,” she said, and almost involuntarily she 
touches the soles of her feet, poor, tired feet. 


“T, too, have been to Jagannath. One priest sat here, 
another there, and there, and there. This one received two 
annas; that, one rupee, and when all the rupees were gone 
they gave that and that,” and she slapped herselfon either 
cheek. 

“In Kashi once I bowed with the throng and people 
walked on my shoulders. I gave money to the priests, 
and when my all was gone they said, ‘Hut! hut!’ (Get 
out! get out!). The rani (queen) of Panna wanted me to 
live there and sing to her and teach her, but the maids, 
oh! the maids, they tossed their heads” (imitating them 
all the time perfectly), “and they said, ‘Who is this per- 
son who has slipped in,’ and I could not endure them. 

“You have said words to me to-night like living water. 
Salaam, sister, salaam, sister,’ and she parted with each 
so. One of them thought of the afternoon when the 
Brahmini had begun, “ Maharaj!” (Great King) and she 
said, “ No, no, say sister.” 

“Little sister!” the woman exclaimed, and swift tears 
filled her eyes. “Sister, sister,” she murmured. “Yes, 
sister,’ and then she said, “My master (husband) died 
when I was about twenty years old and I had no gon, 
only one daughter. They broke my anklets, bracelets, 
and jewelry, and beat me in the face,” gesturing all the 
time most expressively. “They took away my pretty 
clothes and the wife of the elder brother said bitter, bit- 
ter words. My little daughter died and there was no com- 
forter. 

“T poured out my grief to the fields; and when I could not 
bear it all, went to my childhood home. My mother 
and father died and then there was no one in the world to 
love me—no love, no love, and then I began to wander, and 
so my life has passed away.” 

Her thoughts again seemed far, faraway. Was she 
offering attar and sandal-wood and pouring out water by 
some hideous idol; did she see through the sham of priest 
and “holy man”? 

How mournful it all is, how pitiable; how can we draw 
them into the kingdom? “Draw me, draw me with the 


cords of love,” some way sings itself into the memory of 
one. 

The old pilgrim goes away, but in the morning returns 
She goes to the school this time, and sees the girls happy 
and busy with their lessons. She hears them sing of 
Jesus. She begins swaying to and fro again, saying, 
“Light in the darkness! Light in the darkness!” She 
is able to recognize the light. Oh, that she would re- 
ceive the Light of the World! As she came upon the 
verandah she was murmuring in her life-long fashion, 
perhaps, “Sita Ram! Sita Ram!” 

“Oh, not that name!” the girls exclaimed, and began, 
eagerly, to tell her of the One God and Savior. Such a 
message! “A word in season to him that is weary.” How 
the teacher was thrilled as she saw the bright, young 
faces turned to this poor old pilgrim, and then they be- 
gan to suggest hymns, all about Jesus, and they sung ear- 
nestly. Oh, what a Savior! No wonder she murmured, 
as she looked at these girls of her own country, “Light in 
the darkness! Light in the darkness!” 

She came back several times,and once told’us the 
name the priest gave her asa child was Saguniya, but 
because of her many pilgrimages, her guru gave her the 
name Ramabai. Another widowed Ramabai, would she, 
too, might be such a blessing as she of Sharada Sadan, at 
Poona! We asked: “When are you going home?” 

“T, where have J ahome? I have placed faith on many 
idols, have gone from shrine to shrine; now I will place 
faith on One.” She repeated after me, “For God so loved 
the world—.” Will the thought remain with her; will 
the old repetition crowd it all out? God forbid. 

She says she goes to take her nephew to his abode, and 
then to return and stay. We do not know; she has prob- 
ably passed on. Pray that she may live to return; that 
she may leave her idols, poor, tired pilgrim. 


ADELAIDE GAIL Frost, 


Published by the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions, 152 E. Market 
St., Indianapolis, Ind., Aug., 1900, One cent each; ten cents per dozen 


